About Me

Monday, May 30, 2011

I recently bought a Grizzly 4003G lathe, which has proven to be a very useful tool in my shop and a major upgrade from my previous lathe. The 4003G is a great value, and I would definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a 12x36 lathe for hobby or semi-pro work.

Friday, May 27, 2011

I am in the process of upgrading the lighting in my shop. It currently has a number of 4-lamp and 2-lamp T12 4-foot fluorescent fixtures. The best solution is to replace the ballast in each of these fixtures with high-efficiency electronic ballast ($15), and replace the lamps with T8 high-CRI bulbs. This will save energy, and greatly improve the quality of the light. LEDs and T5 fluorescent are MUCH more expensive to install, and their energy savings are not nearly enough to justify the cost. Most LED systems actually use more energy than T5 or T8. Remember that running a T8 with an electronic ballast will provide more light than it's nominal rating, which is for magnetic ballasts. T5 are always rated for electronic ballasts, so it is not a fair comparison.

For new fixtures in my shop, the cheapest/best solution is to buy $10 "shop lights" and replace the ballast. The total fixture cost is $25, and efficiency is 96 lumens/watt for a total output of almost 6000 lumens. It can't be beat! Commercially-available T8 fixtures with electronic ballasts are more expensive, and the quality of the ballast is suspect.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

I built a simple working model of a 3D printer for demonstration at a school. My intention is to show the students how 3D printers work at their most basic level. The model provides a hands-on activity and can create alphabetic letters or other small souvenirs that the kids can take with them.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

A generous benefactor donated some proper SEM apertures to my project. These are much thinner than my brass plate in which I drilled a hole. This should increase resolution as there will be less scattering from the edges of my original, thick aperture plate

The main problem that I am having is that the oscilloscope X and Y amplifiers do not provide enough range or offset to easily control where the scan pattern hits the sample. I knew this would be a problem, so I included small mechanical X and Y stages for the specimen in the microscope. I even designed a vacuum-safe rotary passthrough into the vaccum chamber. The biggest problem is just connecting the rotary passthrough to the stage itself with a right-angle and/or flexible shaft arrangement. Space is very tight and the shaft must move with the stage, making for a difficult mechanical design.

Friday, May 6, 2011

I've made some improvements to the microscope that have increased image quality somewhat. Here is a quick list of the changes:

-Made a new acrylic light guide that allows the scintillator to face the sample directly. The pipe is curved so that the light is directed upwards into the photomultiplier tube. The size of my bell jar necessitated that the PMT be mounted vertically, which is not good since a straight light pipe would cause the scintillator to be aimed directly at the bottom of the chamber.

-Added coaxial cabling and a fully-shielded box to the PMT amplifier circuitry.

-Adjusted PMT load resistor, and eventually installed a potentiometer so that I can change the load resistance to best match the raster scan rate

-Changed PMT amplifier circuitry so that the images are not inverted with respect to normal secondary electron micrographs

This is a MEMs gyroscope. I pried off the cover to expose the die.

This micrograph shows some structure on the die. Hopefully with better magnification and resolution, I'll be able to see the MEMs gyro itself.

It appears to me that the blurriness in these images is somewhat constant across all magnifications. This leads me to believe that focus is not the main issue, and that the problem is with PMT signal recovery. Scanning at a slower rate should help this, but the PMT amplifier is AC-coupled, so the scan rate cannot get too low, and I also cannot see the image on the oscilloscope at low scan rates -- making focus and various other adjustments difficult. I also haven't found a good way to synchronize my camera shutter to the raster scan.